Humpty Dumpty, fictional character, a large egg with human features who is the subject of a nursery rhyme and appears in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1871). As in the nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty is sitting atop a wall when Alice encounters him.

book by Lewis Carroll, dated 1872 but actually published in December 1871. Written as a sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass describes Alice’s further adventures as she moves through a mirror into another unreal world of illogical behaviour, this one...